Political relations between UK-EU

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metalblue said:
My vote to leave was exclusively down to TTIP. I couldn’t reconcile the thought of US corporations having the right to financial redress against our public sector (primarily the NHS / Public Health for me) with a society I wanted to live in and my children to inherit. That it was belatedly kicked to the long grass is irrelevant, that it was considered was what swayed me.

Doesn’t really play into your “xenophobic bastards” narrative - which is a) quite lazy and b) very offensive - but, to borrow @smudgedj parlance for a moment, you’re still welcome.
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Magicpole said:
I have absolutely no doubt that there were plenty of people who had plausible, albeit misguided reasons, but let's not kid anyone, immigration won the day for leave. Or would you contest that? So the xenophobic bastard comment is applicable to the majority, but not all, who voted to leave for no better reason than they wanted rid of people, and wanted to stop others arriving.
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I absolutely would not contest that. I’d say the two main reasons for voting leave were probably immigration and the money. But plenty on the leave side had more robust reasoning and find it offensive when people start labelling them as xenophobic or thick.

The remain campaign failed to ever highlight the benefits (or at least sufficiently well enough for those who they needed to convince). It costs us £350m a week to be in the EU, no it doesn’t it only costs us £150m (or whatever the number was)...rather than espousing the benefits of being a member (and there were plenty - the environment should have been one of their main drivers, people understand and care about that)...similarly with immigration fighting the figures instead of the benefits in a way the proverbial Karen off Facebook can relate to... they got dragged into the leave narrative.
 
metalblue said:
The numbers don’t look that much of an outlier compared to the first lockdown so it’s impossible to offer any form of clear rationale given there are several potential factors at play, brexit (including stockpiling), lockdowns and the health of the respective economies to name a couple.

What we can try and do is make some educated guesses on the back of a fag packet.

Imports from EU are equally impacted (£6.6bn) whereas exports to the RoW are steady and imports from RoW are marginally down.

Main drivers for reduced imports from EU are machinery, transport (including cars) and chemicals. Machinery and Transport/cars will be down to the economic health. Chemicals could be due to stockpiling or increased bureaucracy, probably the former if I was to offer an opinion.

Similarly main drivers for reduced exports to EU include cars and chemicals, including pharmaceuticals. Similar reasons for the imports will apply here (and would more likely point to a narrative of stockpiling on chemicals). Seafood is down £0.7bn and that can be exclusively be blamed on brexit (as people still need to eat irrespective of lockdowns...ok maybe less shellfish if restaurants closed but let’s keep it simple and say it’s all down to brexit).

Given exports (specially in the chemical space) to the RoW aren’t down I’d probably say the evidence does point to pre-brexit stockpiling as the likely cause here.

So there you have it, 80% of the reduced export value is most likely down to stockpiling/ economic health due to COVID and the remaining 20% are issues around exporting live stock (mostly fish/shellfish). They are saying it’s taking 3 days to export to France now compared with same day before. Hopefully that will improve “tout suite” as they say in France.

As shit as that is for the fishing industry it’s a bit early to be saying the shit has hit the fan....however much you want to be proven right about brexit.
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There was approx a 10% reduction in EU trade from 2016 to 2019, largely because European supply chains began reconfiguring to exclude the UK in anticipation of higher trade barriers, which proved to be case. No such adjustment was necessary for non EU trade as the basis for this was not impacted by Brexit.

The final figure for the loss in trade with the EU is yet to be determined, but there will be a further reduction on top of the 10% reduction because when you put up trade barriers, you reduce trade and erode the competitiveness of UK businesses in relation to their European counterparts when it comes to EU trade. In other news, water is wet, etc.

Finally, we have compounded this economic disadvantage by allowing EU firms to flog stuff into the UK without the trade barriers our companies face exporting to the EU, which, I am sure you will agree, is simultaneously stupid and hilarious in equal measure.
 
Citizen of Legoland said:
Yes, but that also depends on whether those widgets previously imported are now made within the country or imported from another trading bloc, the reason for my criticism of the original theory being it demonstrates a rather basic view to support the main point of the post.
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We are talking EU trade. If the widgets are imported from China then it has nothing to do with this conversation.

If some bright spark wants to set up widget production in the UK then good luck to them, however it requires there be enough demand in the UK to make it worthwhile.

The beauty and advantage of the EU Single Market is its sheer size, so if your widgets are a component of a product made in 10 different EU countries you have a market big enough to support your widget making operation. This especially applies if your product is small, ie certain type of buttons used on dresses, blouses, or dolls eyes or whatever.

The decision to restrict ourselves to a much smaller market and putting up trade barriers with a much larger market makes zero economic or business sense and will reduce exports and imports with that larger market.

This is reflected in the figures and no amount of explaining away or ‘let’s see how it pans out first’, can change a basic law of economics, namely, that the higher the trade barriers, the less you will trade.
 
metalblue said:
I absolutely would not contest that. I’d say the two main reasons for voting leave were probably immigration and the money. But plenty on the leave side had more robust reasoning and find it offensive when people start labelling them as xenophobic or thick.

The remain campaign failed to ever highlight the benefits (or at least sufficiently well enough for those who they needed to convince). It costs us £350m a week to be in the EU, no it doesn’t it only costs us £150m (or whatever the number was)...rather than espousing the benefits of being a member (and there were plenty - the environment should have been one of their main drivers, people understand and care about that)...similarly with immigration fighting the figures instead of the benefits in a way the proverbial Karen off Facebook can relate to... they got dragged into the leave narrative.
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We have lost more in the last month to pay all the weekly dues for years. One month.
 
BobKowalski said:
We are talking EU trade. If the widgets are imported from China then it has nothing to do with this conversation.

If some bright spark wants to set up widget production in the UK then good luck to them, however it requires there be enough demand in the UK to make it worthwhile.

The beauty and advantage of the EU Single Market is its sheer size, so if your widgets are a component of a product made in 10 different EU countries you have a market big enough to support your widget making operation. This especially applies if your product is small, ie certain type of buttons used on dresses, blouses, or dolls eyes or whatever.

The decision to restrict ourselves to a much smaller market and putting up trade barriers with a much larger market makes zero economic or business sense and will reduce exports and imports with that larger market.

This is reflected in the figures and no amount of explaining away or ‘let’s see how it pans out first’, can change a basic law of economics, namely, that the higher the trade barriers, the less you will trade.
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You're just not getting the reason for my original post in any way whatsoever. So I'm out.
 
metalblue said:
Now you come to mention it Cameron was in favour of TTIPs
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We’re more likely to end up with a TTIP type deal outside the EU than in the EU because of our size relative to the US which would give them the advantage in any trade deal negotiations. Just as we’ve seen with our EU deal which is much better for them than us.
 
BobKowalski said:
There was approx a 10% reduction in EU trade from 2016 to 2019, largely because European supply chains began reconfiguring to exclude the UK in anticipation of higher trade barriers, which proved to be case. No such adjustment was necessary for non EU trade as the basis for this was not impacted by Brexit.

The final figure for the loss in trade with the EU is yet to be determined, but there will be a further reduction on top of the 10% reduction because when you put up trade barriers, you reduce trade and erode the competitiveness of UK businesses in relation to their European counterparts when it comes to EU trade. In other news, water is wet, etc.

Finally, we have compounded this economic disadvantage by allowing EU firms to flog stuff into the UK without the trade barriers our companies face exporting to the EU, which, I am sure you will agree, is simultaneously stupid and hilarious in equal measure.
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I don’t disagree with much of that.

On the final point. I’m going to be less scathing and say it was, on the surface, naive. I think history will judge it and say it was all done too hastily from a UK perspective but what puzzles me is we shouldn’t have been caught out by EU import rules (given we’ve been implementing them for the past 40 years).

Anyroads we can’t change it now.
 
west didsblue said:
We’re more likely to end up with a TTIP type deal outside the EU than in the EU because of our size relative to the US which would give them the advantage in any trade deal negotiations. Just as we’ve seen with our EU deal which is much better for them than us.
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Well then I’d want a referendum on leaving the UK. Maybe we can join Scotland, they’ll appreciate that I’m sure.
 
BobKowalski said:
You inferred that reduction in imports, offset the ‘cost’ of loss of exports, when in fact both exports and imports are revenue streams for UK companies and a reduction in both is bad news for British Business.
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Unless the good previously exported are being used to satisfy domestic demands (and thus not being imported)

Oh wait the economy shrunk as well.... as you were
 
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